WEEKS and months slipped quietly away in the little Utrecht household; but each, as it passed, brought to Marie an increased anxiety, an aggravated suspense. How was it that for more than a year she had had no word, no message from Edward? Yet she knew well that she only bore the common burden of her sex. In those days, the separation between town and town was greater than that between continent and continent is now. And if this was true even in peace, what must it have been when a savage war was desolating the land?
But few evils are quite unmixed; if the absence of posts and telegraphs delayed good news, they delayed bad news equally. Marie, if she endured prolonged suspense, at least escaped certain sorrow. The Prince—who had sent Wallingford to Maastricht to encourage the citizens in their resistance to the Spaniards—concluded that he had fallen in the massacre, and caused tidings to that effect to be sent to his family in England; but neither he, nor any of his staff, know anything about Marie Pernet, and consequently no one sent her any tidings at all. Dirk Willemszoon, being with the army in Zealand, was better informed, and, with great pains and labor, wrote Marie a letter of condolence, which, fortunately perhaps, she never received.
Thus the winter passed away, silently for all, sadly enough for one waiting heart, in which hope grew ever weaker and weaker, however fondly it was cherished by a brave and resolute will.
One day in early spring, Neeltje, the serving-maid, told Marie that there was a poor woman in the kitchen, who would not be satisfied without seeing the Juffrouw herself.
Marie, with Roskĕ to help her, was engaged in the important task of washing up the precious ware of Delft which they had used for their ten o’clock dinner. She did not want to be disturbed, nor was it anything unusual to be asked for by the poor and needy, so she said, ‘Give her some broth, and tell her I will come anon.’
‘Please you, Juffrouw, Kaatje set broth before her, but she will not eat—not a spoonful—till she has seen you, though she looks poor and hungry enough. I left Käatje talking to her, and indeed she seems to take to her mightily. “Like to like—Jack to Gill—a penny a pair.” There be Paternoster Jills going, as well as Paternoster Jacks, and Heaven knows which are the better, or the worse.’ Neeltje was a zealous Protestant, while her fellow-servant, Käatje, adhered to the old faith.
‘I am ready now,’ said Marie, handing over the last plate to Roskĕ; ‘but remember, Neeltje, ill names do good to no one.’
Neeltje left the room muttering another Dutch proverb, ‘I have a mouth which I feed, and it must speak what I please,’ and Marie followed her to the kitchen.
An old woman, spare and shriveled, with snow-white hair, but eyes still dark and bright, rose as she entered, and made her a reverence. She was clad in a well-worn cloak of coarse gray frieze, and a hood of the same material covered her head. Still, it was no mere compassion for her age and her look of weariness which made Marie say to her, in a tone almost of respect, ‘Sit down, good mother, and tell me what it is you would have of me.’
‘Good mother, say you? ‘Tis a kind word, and suits the young lip and the old ear passing well. Methinks you will not unsay it when you hear my errand. But let these go from us.’ She glanced at the two maidens, who stood near with open-mouthed curiosity.
Marie dismissed them promptly, not much to their satisfaction, and the old woman began at once: —
‘I speak to the Demoiselle Marie Perrenot, promised in marriage to Edward Wallingford?’
The crimson that sprang to the cheek of Marie, the light in her eye, the quiver on her lip, were answer enough.
‘Yes, child, I see—mine eye is not dim yet, though it has served me nearly threescore years and ten. You are longing for news of him?’
‘As the starving long for bread,’ Marie said, drawing nearer.
‘I come to you with bread. Sit down, child, for ere I speak I must ask somewhat. How much do you know already?’
‘One letter—but one—since he left us!’ gasped Marie. ‘Oh, mother, is it good news or bad?’
‘Good news, else would I scarce have journeyed all the way from Amsterdam to tell it. Bad news travels fast enough, and needs no helping on. Yet not always, for I must needs begin my tale with a piece of bad news, which seems not to have reached thee. Was it not told thee that thy lover was in Maastricht, on some errand from the Prince of Orange, when the town was taken again by the Spaniards last October?’
‘No,’ said Marie, growing white.
The old woman laid her hand upon her.
‘Dear child, fear nothing,’ she said kindly. ‘It is true that his friends and comrades think him dead, and I wonder you have not heard as much, for when the town was taken there were many slain, and such as he was little likely to escape. But out of deadly peril he was saved, through the mercy of God and the kindness of a kinsman who was with the Spaniards.’
‘A kinsman? An Englishman? How could an Englishman be with the Spaniards?’ Marie asked, bewildered and incredulous. ‘No Englishman fights for Spain.’
‘This Englishman was not fighting. He was a man of peace, seeking to soften the miseries of war. He took Edward Wallingford under his protection, and brought him with him to a place of safety. There he is now.’
‘Where?’
‘That I may not tell thee. Enough—he is safe and well.’
‘He is a prisoner, then,’ Marie said eagerly. ‘The Prince must be told. He will ransom him, or find an exchange, as he did for M. de St. Aldegonde.’
‘To tell your Prince is to lose your breath,’ the old woman answered, with quiet decision. ‘For the Prince could only treat with the new governor, Don John, and where Edward is, Don John has no power, it is beyond his jurisdiction.’
‘Oh, mother—kind, good mother, if you would but tell me the place—’
‘Have I not spoken? May not is cannot. But know that he is kindly entreated; well fed, well lodged, with access to books, and exercise at his desire in the open air.’
‘But a prisoner?’
‘That is as you like to look at it.’
‘There is but one way of looking at it,’ Marie said. ‘If he were free, he would come back to us.’
‘He will come back to you one day.’
‘But when? How soon?’
‘That I cannot tell. It depends upon circumstances.’
‘But could not a good ransom open the doors of his prison? Mother, if gold could avail in aught—I am not rich, yet would I, and my brother and our friends engage to find enough—more than enough—of Marie’s eyes sparkled with eager hope; it occurred to her that this mysterious beggar-woman might be a secret agent sent to negotiate a ransom, else why had she come at all?’
But the old woman shook her head.
‘Gold,’ she answered, can do nothing. ‘Edward himself might do much; he holds, indeed, his fate in his own hands; and I doubt not (mark me well!)—I doubt not that in the end he will come to terms, and accept his liberty upon reasonable conditions. But in the meantime, out of compassion for thy sorrow, I have been permitted to bring thee a message of hope.’
‘Did he perchance send me a word—a token?’
‘He had no opportunity. He was merely told thou wouldest be apprised of his safety, without the when or the how. But, as for a token that this thing is true—he has taught thee, perhaps, a little of his own tongue?’
‘A few words only. For example, the Paternoster in English, “Our Father which art in heaven.”’
“Hallowed be Thy name; Thy Kingdom come,” the old woman continued reverently.
‘How, mother, you speak English?’
‘I am English, my child. Edward Wallingford is my kinsman also, therefore have I come hither to see you and to comfort you.’
Overcome with surprise and pleasure, Marie would fain have mute the old Englishwoman an honored guest, have brought her to Adrian and Roskĕ, have set the best they had before her. But she would accept nothing at her hands, save one thing only, which she herself asked of her.
‘Kiss me once, Marie, Edward’s bride,’ she said. ‘Edward’s bride, if God will!’ said Marie rather sadly, as she very willingly gave the kiss.
‘He does will it, and it shall be,’ the old woman answered. ‘But when that day comes remember one thing, my child, wife and husband must be of the same faith.’
‘No fears but we will,’ returned Marie, smiling. ‘Edward’s faith is dearer to him than life. So is mine.’
‘We shall see, child, we shall see. Now, whilst I eat this morsel of bread, do me the further courtesy to go and fetch thy brother, that I may exchange a word with him also.’
‘But, mother, you must come with me, and eat manchet bread and drink wine.’
‘Perhaps—but go now for thy brother.’
She went; and returning presently with Adrian, found the door open and the guest departed. In vain did she look up and down the street; her visitor was nowhere to be found, and no one seemed to have seen her. Nor did either of the maidens own to having heard her go.
In Adrian’s opinion her disappearance tended to discredit her story, but Marie would not admit a doubt of it; it was too good not to be true. Käatje and Neeltje had one of their frequent quarrels on the subject; Neeltje maintaining that the old woman was a witch, who had either ridden off on broomstick or been spirited away by her master the devil.
‘For,’ said she, ‘“the fox may lose his hair, but not his cunning,” and the Pope and his monks and nuns are not done with us yet.’
What Käatje answered to Neeltje was less important than what she kept for the private ear of Juffrouw Marie.
‘Juffrouw, do you know who that was that spoke with you?’ she asked in a mysterious whisper, as she spread the table for supper with the fair white damask, the pride of Dutch housewives.
‘She was an Englishwoman—an English lady,’ Marie answered.
‘She may be, Juffrouw, but I know what she is—one of the Béguines of Amsterdam.’
‘And who are the Béguines of Amsterdam?’ asked Marie, not at all as much impressed as her handmaid expected.
‘The Juffrouw surely knows the Béguines. Holy women who do good wonks—feed the poor, tend the sick, all the seven works of mercy, in fact. They have taken the vow of chastity, but they are not shut up in cloisters like nuns. They have a whole Square belonging to them in Amsterdam, with their houses all about it. I ought to know, for I come from Amsterdam myself. My grandmother went to serve the Béguines as a lay sister, and we often used to go and see her when we were children. The ladies were very kind to us, and gave us fruit and sweetmeats—oh, they were good ladies, very! And I know some of them came from far-away lands, so I don’t wonder if there was one of them from England. She would be glad enough, being a Catholic, to get away from the people there, and to find herself once more in a Catholic town.’ For the future capital of Holland, strange to say, had not yet cast off the Spanish yoke.
‘I am sure, Käatje, you and yours are not so ill off here, though this be no Catholic town,’ said Marie. ‘You must confess we treat you better than you treated us, when you had the power.’
‘I don’t know,’ grumbled Käatje. ‘Neeltje makes my life a burden with her proverbs: and yesterday Mynheer Geritzoon’s lad cried after me in the street, “Paapen uit!”—and then, as if that was not bad enough,
“Popish ass,
Go to Mass!”’
‘His father,’ said Marie, ‘ought to box his ears.’ But she was much too happy just then to be greatly moved, even by this harrowing story of religious persecution.
Käatje lingered to say one word more. ‘It was no miracle, Juffrouw, that the holy Béguine went away like that, and you never found her. A boat was waiting on the canal, at the corner, and she went, as she had come, in it.’
The heart can live upon a little hope, and upon a little joy it can thrive and flourish. To know of a surety that Edward lived—that he was safe—that he was not suffering, was more than enough, after the suspense she had undergone, to make Marie’s step light and her cheek rosy.
Adrian, to a certain extent, shared her relief; but he felt, what she did not seem to realize, that even if the Béguine’s story were true, Wallingford was in the hands of zealous Catholics; immured probably in some monastery, where the, most persevering and insidious efforts would be made to undermine his faith; perhaps even his apostasy would be the condition of his release. At times, indeed, a still more dreadful suspicion crossed his mind. What if he were in the fangs of the terrible Inquisition? The visit of the Béguine might have been only a blind, to throw his friends off the scent, lest a scandal should be caused by such an outrage upon the rights of a prisoner of war, and reprisals should be made. Still he did not see that under the circumstances anything could be done; and a natural unwillingness to give pain to his sister made him keep his fears to himself. So Marie went about her daily tasks with a glad and hopeful heart.
It was in these days that the tidings rang through the land of the terrible Spanish Fury: This was the name given to a mal and desperate revolt of the Spanish soldiers, the instruments of Philip’s tyranny. They had done their master’s work for years, with the courage of lions, the fidelity of dogs, and more than the ferocity of wolves. There was no crime they had not wrought for him, no peril they had not dared, no suffering they had not borne. Yet after all this, with incredible meanness, he withheld from them the miserable pittance of pay they had earned so well. It was no wonder they were maddened; but the horror of it was, that in their madness they wreaked their wrath, not upon the oppressor, but upon his victims and their own. The plunder of Flemish cities was to console the soldier for the lack of Spanish pay. Antwerp, the merchant Queen, was the great victim now. For three terrible November days her streets ran with blood, and her houses were the scene of unimaginable horrors and cruelties. Never did she wholly recover the effects of that agony; of which it is enough to say that it was accounted more awful than even the Paris massacre four years before—on the day of St. Bartholomew.
Yet this terrible event wrought good in the end, for the patriot cause. It disposed the southern, as well as the northern provinces, to look towards the Prince of Orange as a deliverer, and for the present with little distinction of class or creed. The men of Brabant and Flanders, like their brethren in Holland and Zealand, began to think that a soldier’s death might be better than a tame submission to enemies. It was about this time also that Don John of Austria replaced Requesens as Governor-General of the Netherlands, and he showed a disposition to treat with the Prince, and to offer conditions of peace.
Thus there was a little breathing space, in which the men and women who had faced so many perils and borne so many sufferings might begin to thank God and take courage.
The soldiers of the Estates could now go on furlough, and visit their friends and relatives. So it happened one day, that as Roskĕ was sitting—as she often did—in her father’s study, she heard a voice which made her rush like a small whirlwind down the stairs and to the outer door. But surely the tall young man who stood there speaking to Neeltje was not Dirk Willemszoon—her Dirk?
Was it Dirk Willemszoon who kissed her hand so respectfully, instead of folding her in the old embrace? A shock, a sense of something new and strange, came over the child; but it soon passed away. The warm welcome of her father and her aunt, and their quiet talk, brought back again to her the old, familiar, well-loved Dirk.
He was now nearly eighteen, and had shot up into a tan, slight stripling. His face had the old look of strength and decision, yet something of boyish innocence and candor lingered in it still, and perhaps was even more perceptible than in earlier days. His eyes were dark and soft—especially when he looked at Roskë.
When they had supped together (in spite of his modest protestations that he would rather go to the Toelast just round the corner), Roskĕ came to him as he sat in the deep window, and began to ask a hundred questions about his exploits and adventures. But he did not seem to have much to say of them; though he told many thrilling stories of the gallantry of his officers and his comrades, to which Adrian and Marie listened with as much interest as did Roskĕ. At last, however, Adrian withdrew to his books, and Marie to her household concerns.
Then Dirk drew forth a little packet. Having opened it, he showed Roskĕ the dear old holiday cap which she and her mother had made for him. ‘See,’ he said, ‘I have kept it—I will keep it always.’
‘You can’t wear it now. Your head is too big.’
‘Trae, Juffrouw; but it goes with me everywhere. It helps me to fight.’
Roskĕ took it, and looked at it critically. ‘I think I could make it big enough,’ she said, ‘by letting it out, and putting a new band—so. Tant’ Marie will help me.’
Dirk went on with a sort of shy eagerness.
‘This time, Juffrouw, I have a present for you. Will you keep it, think you, as long as I have kept yours?’ He gave into her hand a little box of sandal wood, which had been in the packet with the cap. ‘Will it please you to open it, Juffrouw?’
She did so; and absolutely shrieked with amazement and delight as she drew out a long and massive chain of gold, such as knights and nobles were wont to wear. The cry brought Marie to her side. ‘Oh, Dirk,’ said Marie, ‘you ought not to give such a costly gift to a child like Roskĕ. It is not meet or fitting. A new poppet would suit her better.’
‘Tant’ Marie!’ Roskĕ exclaimed with indignation. ‘When you know I have not even looked at my poppets since ever so long ago!’
‘All the same, I say it is not right that Dirk should give thee a gold chain, only fit for a baron’s daughter or a burgomaster’s lady.’
‘It is quite right, Juffrouw Marie,’ interposed Dirk with a beaming face. ‘The colonel said it belonged to me, as my fair and lawful prize of war, when I slew the Spanish Don who wore it, at Zirickzee. I came up just in time, for the colonel was hard pressed. He thought perhaps I would not care for it, so he offered me more than its worth in gold doubloons; but I thanked him, and said I would rather keep the chain. I wanted it for Juffrouw Roskĕ.’ The smile in his eye and on his lip was good to see.
‘What a splendid, gallant youth our Dirk has grown!’ said Adrian afterward to his sister.
‘Truly—but I like not all this adoration that he pours out at the feet of Roskĕ. He was a boy in Leyden. He is a man now.’
Adrian gazed at her in mild, uncomprehending wonder. ‘What can you mean?’ he said; ‘Roskĕ is a babe.’
‘In four or five years Roskĕ will be a young maiden, and Dirk still a young man. Every year brings them nearer in age. And—after all—the son of an Anabaptist carpenter!’
Adrian did what he was wont to do scarcely once a year—he laughed outright. Roskĕ, his pride and treasure—Roskĕ, about whose future he dreamed such lofty dreams—for whom he thought a knight or baron scarce good enough, a prince scarce too good! ‘Put such folly out of thy head, sister mine,’ he said. ‘When the babe grows up to woman’s estate we will take order with her very different from that, I promise thee.’